Piano Strings
by Alma
Summary: Tifa's last thoughts, moments before her death.
1. Fermata

_piano strings_

The sudden rise of blood filled her mouth, thick and metallic, as the sword cut through her ribs and severed her spinal column. Her eyes widened in agonizing realization, her lips slightly parted in a frozen gasp. Unimaginable pain paralyzed her at once – more than she ever thought physically possible, more than she thought she could bear. With a jolt of effort amidst the heavy despair, she looked up at him, the one she had been in love with, but that felt like so long ago.

Time seemed to stop as she gazed deep into the beautiful luminescent shade of blue in his eyes. She could almost feel the warmth of his body, they were so close, but his eyes were not focused on her. He was watching something far away, something she could not see or hear, something he had lost himself within. He didn't appear to recognize her, even when she weakly called out his name. She vaguely mused that this was the closest they had ever been, and in another time, in another life, she would have leaned forward and kissed him. But within seconds he was already moving apart from her. As he slid her body off the cold steel, her fingers reflexively pressed hard against the wound, feeling nothing but hot liquid gushing over her hands. And then she fell. The ground rushed upwards, and she found herself next to the flowerbed with nothing but intense pain clawing through every fiber in her body. Then the abrupt smell of fire stung her nostrils. The memory of his eyes, that blank stare, faded slowly, and a peculiar calmness began to settle the panic in her chest.

She didn't know why she had chosen to run into the church. Perhaps it was some fleeting hope that something familiar, something comforting could break the trance beneath his eyes. But now she realized it had been hopeless.

Lying on her back against the hard stone, peering up through shades of flowers – white and yellow, vibrant, alive – she thought she heard a faint melody. An old tune she once knew how to play on the piano. Even now she could still feel the stubborn weight of the keys under her slender fingers, not yet adjusted to moving in flowing patterns across the stretch of white and black, and her mother glancing over her shoulder in quiet approval. But when her mother died, she no longer played as often, though occasionally the urge to linger in the past held her captive and her fingers found their way into the practiced precision of her mother's favorite tune. And her eyes would sometimes catch a figure standing below her window, in the street, listening. A boy with blonde hair.

But that was years ago. The growing heat was making her dizzy, and the boy with blonde hair was still here, except he couldn't hear the melody that she could. Perhaps he could hear nothing but static now – his memory of her piano dead, vanished. Past the flowers, she saw orange and white flames tearing upwards, engulfing the splintered wooden benches, but the intense heat felt much more real and alarming than that visual carnival. The petals wilted, and black pillows of smoke were scarring the stone walls, yet still she couldn't move. Blood loss. The slippery pain over her abdomen, the numbness in her arms, the mild drifting sensation claiming her head – it all meant nothing, because she was attempting to listen to that melody playing so softly, so perfectly.

The sweat clung to her skin, raw and pained. Smoke was filling the air above her, and each shallow breath stretched and burnt through her lungs, her throat. The blood began trickling from the corner of her lips. Nothing was right. And yet nothing felt wrong. Between two fingers, she gently pressed the stem of a nearby white lily, crushing the soft thin green until the head bowed to greet her. Heavy footsteps, followed by the sound of metal sliding against concrete, swallowed the piano tune running around her thoughts. The blonde haired man stepped over her without pause, red dripping from the sword he held, and his boots trailed further from her sight as he departed, a dark shadow cast across his face in the flames. She couldn't remember if he was the same boy that had stood outside her window, listening to her play piano.

The white lily crumpled in her palm as smoke filled her lungs and asphyxiation set in, her body curling like a cut string.


	2. Last Note

(a/n: The italics are Tifa's final thoughts directed towards a certain blond. )_  
_

* * *

_Can you hear it?_

_I wish you could..._

_It's difficult for me to imagine things happening any other way now. I suppose I knew it would end like this; that you would eventually be lost in a blur, in a frenzy. Was it the Mako or the Jenova or both? Or maybe something else, far beneath the surface. I had always known it was inevitable, though. The way your eyes would became clouded when you spoke to me, your sudden reclusion, the hatred and anger in all the words you used – all pointing to your decline, yet I was too frightened to confront you, confront it. _

_You've been fighting for so long. We all have. And I didn't want to fight anymore._

Yuffie's face darkened with sudden apprehension when she saw his shadow in the doorway. Moving Denzel behind her protectively, she reached one hand into her bandana, retrieving a small shuriken from its folds. The tiny sharp edges glinted under the yellow lightbulbs of the bar, and she could hear Denzel inhale with fright. Her first instinct was to say something to Cloud – a boastful claim of her ancestry, verifying her undisputed reputation as the best ninja, the fastest, the smartest!

But her mouth simply hung open, eyes trailing down to the massive sword, dark blood dripping off its end. His posture, his stance, was all different, much too rigid. What held her attention most, however, were his eyes; his affect was completely blank. A chilling shade of bright blue stared hollowly at her, his hand holding the sword absolutely still.

_Truthfully, the emotionless expression on your face surprised me more than the sword sliding through my belly. I knew I should have told you, warned you of my suspicions, before it killed you. Foolishly, I thought we could escape the past, and that you especially could escape what you were meant to become._

"C-Cloud?" Yuffie managed to ask softly, the inclination to joke long gone.

He stepped towards her slowly, mechanically.

"Where is Tifa?!" Yuffie shouted, tensing the muscles in her arm.

The blood drops left a spattered trail along the barroom floor as he continued moving forward. Yuffie didn't need another second to determine what had happened. It was just as they all feared. And Tifa had been the first one to know it.

_How fitting that it began in fire and ended in fire, for us?_

Without a moment's hesitation, Yuffie threw the tiny weapon with absolute expertise, her fingers gently twisting in precise release. He jerked quickly to avoid it, but the blade still struck the side of his forehead causing him to reel backwards for only a second, fresh blood flowing from the wound. His free hand reached up to dab the liquid, as if trying to determine if it were real or not, but his expression still did not change.

Yuffie cursed aloud, knowing all too well that her conformer was no where close. Denzel was frigid, hands trembling. Frantically, she grabbed a nearby glass mug and hurled it at the man advancing with steady resolution.

"Snap out of it, Cloud!" she screamed, angry that he could have done this on the exact day she had chosen _not_ to bring a weapon along with her. A horrid coincidence. Whatever can go wrong will, she thought miserably.

Things happened slowly in the next span of seconds for the ninja. The way he watched her, the terrifyingly slow progression of his steps, the tension evident throughout his muscles, and most disturbingly, the air of calm in his actions caused her anticipation to be slightly lower than usual. She wanted to trust this friend, as much as she knew it was no longer him. She hardly saw the metal move. A strange bright flash of reflective light spewed into her eyes, sudden pain tearing through her face and chest, then hot liquid choking her.

Yuffie fell, and the peculiar inability to feel her body struck her as pure fiction. She would have liked to laugh, but her throat felt tight and moist. For a vanishing instant, she thought of Vincent, of somehow reaching him, warning him. Then the severity of the pain became reality and she knew it would be over soon. Distantly, she heard another scream and remembered that Denzel had been with her at one point. And that Marlene was upstairs.

How absurd that the great Yuffie Kisaragi would be defeated in such a dreary fashion, she grimly reflected. As she faded, the floor opened up under her eyes, and the vast region of Wutai lay before her, a dying red sky dipping to meet the cobalt ocean far in the distance. She remembered this view from her childhood. She would climb the giant stone statue of Dao-Chao and stand on its highest point, dangerously close to the edge with nothing but the wind around her face and hair. The city always seemed so tidy and organized from above. This sight had brought her immeasurable calm because the future never felt overwhelming from up there.

She didn't want to die. There were still so many things she wished she could do in life, but the protests in her mind fell silent as she stared out at the red sunset. In the final second before her heart stopped, Yuffie wanted nothing more than to glimpse her view of Wutai from high atop the great statue one last time.

--

The frantic phone call from Marlene had ended with an abrupt scream, so Vincent had known something was horribly wrong immediately. Contacting Barret without delay, Vincent conveyed his concern to the child's surrogate father, who shouted wildly with panic and demanded the two get to the bar as fast as possible. Barret threw the door back the second they had arrived, calling out for Marlene desperately, while Vincent noted the black plume of smoke rising from the end of the Midgar ruins in the distance.

The mutilated body of a young ninja lay splayed on the floor, and Vincent felt his heart jump, averting his gaze at once. Barret's heavy boots bounded up the stairs, determined to find his little girl, then stopped dead as he spotted the blonde haired man in the dimness of her bedroom.

"You! Jus' what da hell –" But his words halted when his eyes fell on the tiny corpse at Cloud's feet, her smooth dark hair still pulled neatly into a single braid. "Mar-Marlene...!" The name choked in his throat, his teary eyes instantly moving to settle on the bloody sword, freshly stained on top of previous dried coats.

Vincent had ascended the stairs and was quietly observing with wide ruby eyes, one hand hovering over the holster at his side. Yuffie's death had caused a series of startling emotions to reawaken within his chest. Ones that he hadn't felt in years – regret, loss, guilt, and most prevalently, anger.

"You... You piece of shit! What da hell is wrong wit you?!" Barret roared at the shadowed figure, charging forward with his arm poised.

But Cloud wasn't looking at Barret or Vincent. It seemed the blonde hadn't actually noticed their presences until Barret's synthetic fist struck the side of his head. Cloud's attention snapped to the new threat and the sword moved methodically between the two, red spattering on his face. A chill passed through Vincent's soul as he watched Cloud's movements. So it _was_ inevitable, he thought, reflecting back on Tifa's secret worries she had disclosed to him months prior.

The sharp blue eyes gazed forward as if without sight, past Vincent and Barret, yet his body moved in harmonious response to the shots fired at him, sword cutting through the bullets or deflecting them fast.

_There was a part of you nobody understood...not even yourself. You admitted that much long ago. _

"This isn't your fight, Cloud!" Vincent yelled over the gunshots from both himself and Barret, dangerous pieces of metal ricocheting around them, the room suddenly feeling much too small.

"Fuck dat! I'ma fuckin' kill him!" Barret shouted, his voice charged with emotion.

"Cloud... This isn't your fight!" Vincent repeated, narrowing his eyes on the cold sapphire pools.

Cloud paused and a shudder seemed to run along his shoulders. He looked straight at Vincent, and then shook his head slightly, so faintly that the gunman had hardly noticed. The muscles in Cloud's jaw tensed, and he immediately resumed his vacant stare, swinging viciously at Barret. The hail of gunfire from either side miraculously missed the swordsman, who leapt back calmly, using the flat side of the giant blade as a shield.

"Why Marlene, huh?! Why Marlene, you bastard!?" Barret continued, anger cutting in his voice, "Answer me!"

"Barret, he's gone..." Vincent called out with a tone of finality, "He's gone."

_...Can you hear it?_

Cloud hesitated for just a second, the sword angled downwards in such a way that exposed his right side plainly. Vincent knew he couldn't afford to miss the chance and aimed quickly, sending a bullet through Cloud's abdomen, puncturing his lung. A white hot pain shot through Cloud's chest, crawling up into his throat and mouth. Blood. Another gunshot sent pain exploding through his leg and he fell, the sword dropping from his grasp.

Four additional gunshots were suddenly in Cloud's stomach, tearing through his internal organs, slippery heat gushing outward. The shadow in Cloud's eyes gradually began to clear, and he gazed up at the two men standing silently, weapons trained on him. But soon, breathing became too difficult for him. Thick coppery liquid was coating his throat.

Vincent and Barret were saying things, but it all sounded distant to Cloud. He felt lighter, a harsh numbness settling over his body. And it was gone – the constricting fog, the haze in his brain that had dominated his willpower, obscured his reasoning. Gone.

Everything fell into darkness rapidly. There was no time to think, to say anything to his saviors. He remembered long ago following a distraught girl with long dark hair and burgundy eyes into the mountains of Nibelheim simply because he wanted to prove his loyalty, because he wanted to protect her. Curiously, he felt that same sensation of following her now.

As his pale blue eyes closed, he thought he heard the faintest melody playing somewhere far away. Like someone tapping out a familiar tune on piano strings. A song he could not name. And then, that too was gone.


End file.
